Vinland Saga S2 – 6 [I Want a Horse]

Welcome back everyone, to another week of Vinland Saga! This week sees us return to Thorfinn and Einar as they continue their quest to build a farm. Doesn’t sound all that exciting right? Yet for me it was one of the most thematic and emotionally poignant episodes of the year so far. So without further ado, lets dive into it!

Right off the bat, from visual cues alone, you can see in how much better a place Thorfinn is. His hair is pulled back, allowing us to see his face, and his eyes shine with a depth they previously lacked. Thorfinn also walks straighter, with less of a hunch, and he overall seems much cleaner. On top of that, he’s also talking much more. A lot of it is softly-spoken sure, and he is still rather demure. But he’s much more willing to ask questions of people. And he even raises his voice when it’s just him and Einar working the farm, clearly feeling more comfortable expressing himself! All these small things come together to paint Thorfinn as a completely different person then he was when we last left him. It’s like he’s been born again almost, both literally and figuratively.

As a matter of fact, not only is that exactly what I think happened, it’s one of my favorite thematic through-lines of the arc. This is a chance at a whole new life for Thorfinn. In his very own words, he previously came from a land that literally could not support farms. After that, he spent his life on the battlefield. The closest he ever got to working a farm was when he raided them with Askeladd. Working on this farm, where no one knows his past and sees him as only a lowly slave? Well like Einar say, he’s a baby. A newborn in this world with a chance to finally live like a civilian, a member of a community, a builder in a world where he had only ever destroyed.

And that’s kind of what makes it beautiful for me. Now Thorfinn has this chance to finally see just how much work goes into these farms. How difficult it is clearing trees, plowing fields, collecting rocks, and turning a wasteland into a breadbasket. Before he never understood what plows were for or just how much ingenuity went into them. Yet here he is, appreciating not just how they make his life easier but how much effort must have gone into creating them. Thorfinn comments how only a farmer could have invented it, as only a farmer would truly understand how hard the labor is. It’s a vast change in perspective for Vinland Saga, and one I’ve seen a lot of people grow bored of. They want the action, the combat, the blood, all the while missing the beautiful point of it all: Building something.

Compare this to his time as a warrior. Back then, he only destroyed, and he felt miserable for it. Thorfinn dedicated his life to killing a man, and in the process of that killed countless more. He only ever tore down, resulting in the man we last saw in Episode 4. Now though he finally gets to feel the joy and fulfillment of creation. Of contributing to something. I realize I’m sort of repeating the same general stuff here, of how Vinland Saga is exploring Thorfinn’s transformation from a man with no connections and only hate in his heart into one that is part of a larger whole. But the presentation of it all is just so… poignant to me. I find it difficult to believe that others can’t see this too, and it makes me want to lay it out like you would for a small child.

This isn’t to say Vinland Saga subscribes purely to that either, as the episode pushes back against both extremes. Through Sverkel, Kettil’s father, we also get a condemnation of taking more then you need. We learn about this viscous cycle of producing wealth, spending to protect it, making more to pay for that protection, repeating forever onward. There comes a point where your life starts to revolve around making money, rather than living. We see this dichotomy in the other Father/Son pair of the Kettil family, as the current Master seeks every greater prosperity while Sverkel just wants to live his last days on his own little farmstead.

Finally there are just a lot of lighter, more wholesome moments worth mentioning. Stuff like Einar and Thorfinn bonding against the retainers, or Thorfinn admitting that they are friends. I imagine this is a first for him, to be honest. Growing up with warriors and killers, friendship probably wasn’t very common. Especially not when these are the men who killed your father and you hate their leaders guts. It’s just another example of Thorfinn growing into a new man, one capable of not only recognizing friendship, but finding it for himself. In a way, it’s like he’s growing into the man Thors always hoped he would.

So yeah, all in all I quite enjoyed this episode of Vinland Saga. It was slow, sure. And that might turn some people off. But for me the progression of the characters and seeing the peace they have obtained before it all starts to inevitably crash down around them, was really nice. Slow is only boring when nothing is happening. But a lot of things happened in Vinland Saga this week! They were just all internal.